Last November, I was sitting in one of my favorite coffee houses when I overheard a conversation and afterwards introduced myself to a man who ended up being a pastor at a local church. I wrote about it here: http://ow.ly/jySWG

Yesterday, I was at the same coffee house, and ended up sitting next to Jerry—the pastor I met four months ago. We talked for over an hour, discussing topics ranging from adoption to salvation to grace. He also showed me a picture of the baby he and his wife recently adopted. And it’s cool, because the whole reason why we met last November is because I overheard a conversation about the adoption.

Tonight, I attended a special Maundy Thursday service at The Ridge Church, where Jerry serves as lead pastor. He saw me from across the parking lot as I was walking in and introduced me to his wife and their newborn adopted daughter, who in a way was responsible for me standing there in the church parking lot in Carrollton, simply because she was born. It’s remarkable how the trivial things can impact our lives in such profound ways.

Another pastor preached the service tonight, and he talked about how all Christians belong to one another in Christ, even if they attend different churches. He read from 1 Peter, and talked about how we are all “living stones” who are being built into a “spiritual house,” and he said that God is building a much bigger Church than what we see here, and that the house He is building is the only one that truly matters. And I liked that, to think that Jerry and I are both being built into the same house, and this was true even before we met randomly at the coffee house last fall.

This is exactly what I love about the Kingdom. Total strangers can have a conversation and feel like they’ve known each other their entire lives, because they have Christ in common. The Kingdom of God is a relational Kingdom—a Kingdom of connection.

“Now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 2:3-5, NIV